Edge of Paradise
by padfoot's prose
Summary: There's a party in the Common Room, and Lily sneaks James up to his dorm to finish what they started that morning.


**An unashamedly plot-less make-out fic because I had a thought and rolled with it. Warning for some very heavily implied smuttiness, because if I can't write it, I'll have to settle with heavily implying it instead!**

**Title stolen from Ellie' Goulding's _Love Me Like You Do_ because one day I will write a fic that captures the way that song makes me feel. This isn't that fic, but it's a start.**

* * *

**Edge of Paradise**

_**by padfoot**_

* * *

Music is pounding in the Common Room downstairs, vibrating through the floor and walls. The dormitory is buzzing, dust being shaken from the cornices while the glass of water on the table beside Peter's bed ripples, wobbles, and finally falls with a smash onto the ground. Lily looks up, grabs her wand from her bag and waves it at the glass, which promptly fixes itself, but stays lying on the floor. James let out a questioning grunt, and Lily says, "If I move it back onto the table it'll just fall off again," before leaning up to kiss him.

The curtains aren't fully drawn around James' bed, because sometimes there just isn't _time_ for that sort of thing. With the Quidditch victory party in full swing downstairs, Lily had worried she wouldn't get a moment of time alone with James today, and had grabbed him and dragged him up to his dormitory at the first chance she'd gotten.

"You're eager," James had laughed as Lily crowded him back against the dormitory door. She'd been standing on tiptoes to reach his face, arms thrown around his neck to tug him down, and lips hard as she kissed him and _kissed him_ some more.

"We never got to finish what we started this morning," Lily had murmured against his cheek, kissing down to his neck. He'd laughed again and pulled back to look at her pout. "I had big plans for this morning," she'd said.

James had grinned, and reached up to untangle her arms from his neck. His fingers linked with hers as he walked her backwards towards his bed

"What type of plans?"

It had been a matter of pride to James that Lily didn't once look back, simply trusted him to guide her across the dormitory floor as she'd whispered, voice low and sultry, "Good luck plans."

"Well," James had replied, "I clearly didn't need it."

Lily had rolled her eyes and stepped to the side, pulling one of her hands from James' grip.

"Look, Potter, if you don't want my good luck I can go back to the party. Remus was just telling me about this new Charms book in the Library and I'd be very happy to hear about that instead of-"

James had hushed her with a beseeching look and a desperate grab to pull her body close to his again.

"Don't go," he'd said, "Stay with me."

"Well," she'd murmured, "If you insist."

And that was how they found themselves sprawled on James' bed, curtains undrawn and clothes quickly being discarded.

"You stink!" Lily laughed, pulling off James' shirt and dropping it to the floor.

James was still mostly upright, straddling her thighs as he replied, "Gee, thanks, Evans, always what a guy wants to hear."

Lily ran her palms up his chest, her touch light and cold and blissful on his bare skin. She hooked her hands over his shoulders and pulled him down to hover over her once more. His elbows framed her head, and he traced lines along her cheekbones with his fingers, swiping a thumb across her lip. Her eyes sparkled in the dim moonlight that shone in through the window.

"I don't mind the way you stink," Lily admitted.

James smiled down at her.

"I don't mind the way you stink either."

"Hey! I don't- mmph."

Lily's protests were muffled by a kiss, which she didn't seem to mind one bit.

Her body curved up as James' kisses grew harder and harsher and _better_, as if her skin couldn't bear to be so far away from his. She ran her hands down his bare back, fingers dancing over shoulder blades, bunched, tense muscles, and the knobs of his spine. He lowered his torso down, pressing her into the mattress, and Lily's whole body tingled, her insides heating up and _longing_ for something more.

While Lily had been distracted, James' lips had traced a burning trail down to her collarbone, and his fingers were swift and sure as they unbuttoned her blouse. He kissed every new inch of skin, revelling in the points of pressure on his back where Lily's fingertips dug into him. He glanced up and smiled at the sight of her head thrown back, her lips open in a breathy, beautiful moan.

"This needs to go," James said against Lily's stomach and she giggled and sat up to push her top the rest of the way off.

James kept his head low, his body curled right up like a spring as he nipped at her hipbone, his tongue tickling across her ribs. He looked up to shoot her grin, which changed quickly into an expression of devastation when he saw her lacy black bra.

"You're trying to kill me," he groaned, his back uncoiling suddenly as he pushed Lily back down, mouth descending onto her chest.

"Killing you wouldn't really be in the spirit of good luck," Lily pointed out, hands in James' hair. "It was meant to motivate you."

"It's working," James said.

"It was meant to motivate you to play _Quidditch_!"

"Oh," James looked up, his hair wrecked and his lips cherry-red, "If I'd seen you like this morning, Evans, I wouldn't have made it to Quidditch. I wouldn't have made it out of bed."

Lily preened a little, never one to get sick of being told she was sexy, however inadvertently the compliment was given. James ran a hand up her side, cupping her breast, running a fingertip back and forth along the edge of her bra.

"You're such a _boy_," she giggled.

"And you're _such_ a girl," he replied, with a squeeze for good measure, hard enough to make Lily yelp. He grinned at her and added, "I love it."

Lily rolled her eyes – she tended to do that a lot when they made out – and pulled James down so she could kiss him again.

His hand stayed on her breast, the other sliding down to creep up under her skirt and squeeze the outside of her thigh through her stockings. Lily bent her knee up, feeling her skirt hike up indecently high, and laughed again at the thought of someone walking in through the dormitory door to be treated to this sight.

"We should close the curtains," she whispered.

James sighed, as if she'd just made the most difficult request in the history of time, but stopped kissing her, disentangled their limbs, then sat up and hastily started pulling the curtains closed around his bed.

Lily sat up as well, taking the opportunity to tug her stockings down and toss them onto the floor, before folding her body over James'. She let her hands hang down over his chest, her front pressed skin-on-skin all the way down his back as she pressed light, teasing kisses against the side of his neck. She reaching his earlobe and sucked it into her mouth, James' groan vibrating through his whole body.

"You're the one who wanted these bloody curtains closed!" he accused, clearly flustered. He was struggling to pull the curtains around the bottom corner of the bed, and Lily's distractions were apparently not helping with the task.

"I can stop if you want," Lily offered, lips back on James' neck. She was moving around to the back now, her hands sliding up to his shoulders and settling there to rub at the quivering muscles, which leapt and shuddered impossibly more at her touch.

James finally succeeded getting the curtain around the corner, and after he pulled them closed neatly his whole body sagged in surrender to Lily's ministrations. His head tipped back to rest against Lily's shoulder as he begged her, "_Don't stop_."

Lily smiled, turned to kiss along James' hairline and rest her lips at his temple as she continued massaging his shoulders.

"I'm not sure if you prefer me or the massage," she admitted, and James only groaned in reply. "Oh," she went on, feigning offence, "I see how it is then."

"Lily," James murmured, his eyes fluttering open to gaze piercingly up at her, "I'd take one second with you over a lifetime of massages, an infinity of massages. I'd always pick you."

"I know that, you idiot."

"Doesn't hurt to remind you."

"No, it doesn't."

They were both silent for a moment, and it was as if the whole world had slowed down. The buzz of music from the Common Room had faded into the background, and suddenly without all the kissing and moaning and touching and heat, nothing was there to distract from the solid fact of them: Lily and James. About to do Something Big. About to do It.

"I love you," Lily said. "I feel like that's important to say."

"I love you too. But you already knew that."

"You've never exactly been subtle about it."

"I know, I'm a bit of a 'put it all on the line' kind of guy. All or nothing, you know."

"I've noticed."

They both smiled, soft and adoring and excited about what was to come. Lily's hands moved down to rest at the front of James' pants, just touching, just _there_. James closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

"I feel like I'm meant to tell you that we don't have to do this," he said.

"But I want to do this," Lily replied, "It was kind of my idea. I wanted to do it this morning."

"Yeah. I know."

Lily laughed, for first time sounding just a bit nervous. Her breath was warm against James' back, and he could feel were her forehead was pressed against his neck, her head down, her breaths deep and calming. Her heart was pounding where her chest was pressed against him.

"You should turn around," Lily whispered.

"Okay."

Lily moved back to make room for James to shuffle around on the bed. He ended up with his back against the headboard and Lily kneeling beside him.

"You should take off your skirt," James said.

"Should I?" Lily asked, the hint of her teasing tone back.

It made James smile and his body loosened just a bit. He reached out to pinch the hem of her skirt, tugging at it a little, his stomach doing uncomfortable, wonderful flips.

"For science," James said, and he couldn't take his eyes off her skirt now, couldn't stop the blood rushing through his body, the heat pooling in his belly. He _needed_ Lily naked and touching him and it was frightening and wonderful how much he knew she wanted it too.

"Well, if it's for science," Lily laughed, and she undid the zipper, and pulled her skirt off. Her long legs stretched out, folded over James' lap and all of sudden he was sitting in bed with _Lily Evans_ on his lap in a black lacy bra and panties, and his head was just _empty_ and it was a tragedy of epic proportions.

James had no words.

His head was a mad panic of action as his brain searched and strived for something to say but there was nothing, just _nothing_ in there. His mouth was open but he felt like a void, as if James had floated away and just left this gaping, stupid, dumb body behind and there he was, floating above it all, seeing how much of an idiot he looked like and willing himself to just clamp his mouth shut or better still, _speak_.

"I'm taking this a good sign," Lily finally said, her voice a bit breathy with disbelief.

"Yeah. Uh. Yep."

Lily bit her lip, head tilted sideways as she looked hard at the gaping, incoherent body that had previously been James.

"Do you need a minute?" Lily asked. "Or can we keep going?"

"Yes," James replied, intelligent as ever.

"Yes to which part? Look, Potter, I'm going to need a clearer answer than that if you ever want us to-"

"You match."

Lily looked perplexed at the interruption.

"Excuse me?"

James snapped his mouth shut, finally regaining control his body, and then tried again.

"You- they match. Your bra and- and-"

He gestured at her underwear, completely incapable of saying 'panties' out loud.

"Oh," Lily actually blushed, which James considered an achievement, given that he was only very barely able to form sentences. "Yeah. They do."

"Do they always match?"

Lily laughed, and it wasn't entirely pitying, but it also didn't answer James' question

"No, Evans, I'm serious. Do your… your _underwear_ – do they always match?"

"You mean, like, every day?"

"Yeah."

Lily shrugged, suddenly coy.

"I can't tell you that."

"But-"

James wasn't quite sure if Lily understood just how much this mattered to him. Because seeing Lily, his girlfriend, fully dressed, every day was already a _thing_. It was already an issue for him, a wonderful issue, but one that left him shell-shocked and more often than not horny, because she was beautiful and _his_ and that was already, really, honestly, just a bit much for him to bear.

But to see Lily Evans fully dressed every day and to know that underneath all of _that_ was all of _this_? James wasn't sure that he would ever be able to be seen in public again. He certainly wouldn't be able to be in public with Lily again. They'd have to go back to keeping their relationship a secret and not even doing so much as holding hands because there was no possible way for James to hold hands with a girl wearing a matching black lacy bra and panties without self-combusting. It just wasn't an option.

Lily was staring at James with her eyebrows raised, clearly unaware of his internal strife.

"Please tell me if it always matches," James asked, one more time, because it was all he could think about, and only now was the possibility dawning on him that _not knowing_ might be even worse than knowing this sort of thing.

Lily shook her head.

"Nope," she said, and James was about to protest when she put a finger on his lips. Her eyes were sparkling as she looked into his, her body warm on his lap and _oh, right_, James remembered that they'd been about to do something before all of this. "But I definitely don't mind if, in the future, you want to find out if they match. You'll have to check thoroughly though. Every day."

James needed a moment to take that in. Lily traced a line up his arm, over his shoulder and down his back.

"Sound good?" Lily asked

"I love you," James said, tone utterly sincere.

Lily laughed and leaned in to kiss him, pausing just before her lips touched his to whisper, "Then prove it."

And he did.

* * *

James tackles Lily when she is sitting alone in the Common Room the next day, sucking on the end of her quill as she puzzles over a Potions assignment. He practically carries her to his dorm, has her shirt off and is kissing his way up her skirt before she realises she is in fact on his bed and the curtains are in fact drawn and _oh_, she didn't know that was a thing she could _feel_.

"I knew they couldn't always match!" James cries out, his head popping up from between Lily's legs.

She blinks at him, perplexed for a long moment before she says, "Oh, sod off, you prat!" and shoves his head back down between her thighs.


End file.
